


Spindrift

by villaindry



Series: Gospel of Water [2]
Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Flashbacks, Flashbacks in flashbacks, Gendered Language, Multi, Slow Burn, Trans Athelstan, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Violence, gendered slurs, maybe too many flashbacks?, non-consensual undressing, tw: forced outing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:28:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26192659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/villaindry/pseuds/villaindry
Summary: In the late afternoon warmth, Athelstan felt heavy and sunken with something. Like desire, or the deep pulling possibility of it, that tied like strings around his limbs and kept him sprawled against the prow as Ragnar towered above him. It felt like there was a point between them, a balancing point, that kept them fixed in those positions, one above and one below the other at either end of the boat. And the feeling of watchfulness was still there, which had grown between them as they worked, side by side watching the water, with sunlight flashing on its surface and dark shapes flickering beneath it. They were watching the water, and each other at the same time.
Relationships: Athelstan/Ragnar Lothbrok, Athelstan/Thyri (Vikings)
Series: Gospel of Water [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902151
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	Spindrift

**Author's Note:**

> I watched seasons 1-4 of Vikings at the start of lockdown and this weird tangled thing about time and memory and forgiveness and sacrifice is the result.
> 
> At least three stories for the price of one. The tense change halfway through was intentional, though possibly ill-conceived. No beta, so no one to tell me this was a bad idea. 
> 
> Also playing very fast and loose with Norse mythology here ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Main narrative - canon divergence during 2.04 - Eye for an Eye.  
> 
> 
> **PLEASE heed the tags.** Includes a scene of non-consensual undressing / outing of a trans character, and violence during an interrogation scene. See end notes for more things you may want to know beforehand. The ending is as light as possible considering everything else going on, but if in doubt, please don't read.

_I can see your wounds that have not yet healed. The holes in your hands. Tell me what happened._

_It happened. What more is there?_

_There must be more. Tell me; I’m listening._

_I don’t know where to start._

_At the beginning, naturally?_

_Is that right? These days I feel time like it’s a sea, and I’m swimming in it. There’s no way forwards or back, there’s only the horizon, all around._

_Start where you will, then. I’ll follow._

_____

He’s hit. That’s how they get him in the end. An arrow, that punctures through the padding in his jacket and embeds itself in the soft flesh just below his ribs. He manages to outrun them for a while, bent double, stumbling through the understory like a wounded rabbit or a deer. But eventually, he can’t run anymore, and he sinks to his knees, and lets darkness close over him as he waits for them to find him. 

He wakes on cool stone. Something pricks at the back of his neck, and he tries to roll over. Pain instantly lashes through his side, and he slumps back, stifling a gasp. 

“Don’t try to move just yet,” says a voice. He can’t see whom it belongs to. Pale evening light slants sideways through narrow, high-set windows, weakly illuminating a lofty stone room. He’s in a church, he realises. 

Footsteps approach, and then a man is bending down beside him. One arm creeps beneath Athelstan’s head, lifting it, another brings a pitcher of water to his lips. 

“Drink this,” the man says, and Athelstan obeys. As he drinks, he studies the man holding him. His eyes are focused on the pitcher, pressing it gently but firmly to Athelstan’s mouth, exerting the tiniest, placating pressure to keep his lips parted. The forearm that cradles his head is firm and lightly muscled, but the man is young - younger than Athelstan, he guesses. His face is smooth, boyish and open. 

“Where am I?” he asks, as soon as the young man sets the pitcher down. 

“So you can speak our language! They said you could. How is that possible?”

“I’m not one of the Northmen,” he replies. “I was a monk at Lindisfarne. They took me captive when it was raided.”

“A monk…” the young man breathes. “Brother. You have travelled far from Lindisfarne to be here now, though.” 

“You have no idea,” Athelstan grunts, trying to sit up again. The man puts a hand to his chest. 

“Stay still. You need to rest. The arrow didn’t go as deep as I feared, but it will need time to heal and I still have to dress the wound.”

“Why?” Athelstan frowns. “Why bother trying to heal me? I’ve fought with the Northman. I’ll be executed for that, surely?”

“We’ve sent word to the bishop. He will want to speak with you, to find out what you know of them. If it’s true and they captured you as a monk, then perhaps he will grant you clemency. Regardless, brother, I help you because it is the Christian thing to do.”

At that, Athelstan stills. Of course it is, he thinks. Am I so far from God that I’ve forgotten what it means to help a stranger?

“Thank you,” he says, closing his eyes. 

His jacket is already unfastened and has been spread wide. The man’s hands creep to his tunic, lifting it by inches, until the wound in his side is revealed. Athelstan doesn’t look, but he can feel the cold sting of air on it. It’s a cold that doesn’t stop at his skin. It pierces inside him, alien and insidious. 

“What’s this?” his eyes flash open. The tunic is lifted to his ribs, exposing the bindings beneath. Fingers scrabble at the cloth and the shock of the touch jolts through him like another arrow. 

“Nothing. Don’t touch them!” he snaps, even though he can feel the cloth is stiff and rank with drying blood. 

“But they’re filthy,” the man continues, oblivious to how Athelstan’s body has tensed, like a hare preparing to flee. “And they’re so tight. How can you breath with them like that? I should remove them -” but Athelstan stops him with a hand tight around his wrist, tight enough to snap it if he wants to. He summons everything he can of Ragnar as he stares the young man down, all but baring his teeth at him. 

“Leave them alone,” he snarls. The young man recoils in fear. Athelstan loosens his grip on the man’s wrist and sinks back down on the straw bed. “Forgive me,” he says quietly. “But you can’t touch them. They bind another wound. You mustn’t touch them,” he repeats, and hopes that he has said enough. The man stays silent, but after a long moment Athelstan feels cool fingers returning to his side, and hears the sound of water poured into a dish. 

Later the man brings him food, and fresh straw and blankets. Athelstan watches him arrange these things carefully on the floor, and when he leaves, he falls on the food like a starving dog. It doesn’t seem like the man is coming back, and when the food is gone there’s nothing to do but wait for sleep. Athelstan makes a rough nest out of the straw and blankets, but neither are much use against the chill that seeps into his limbs from the cold stone, and the dark earth stretching away below it. The evening draws on slowly, and sleep evades him. Restless and stiff, he stalks the church walls, stopping at the door and beneath the high windows to listen for sounds outside. Whatever is out there is quiet. Through the windows he can see the dark tops of trees, and the sky stretching away as far as the earth does below. In the shadowy chancel, behind an iron gate, there is the dull glint of a crucifix.

Eventually he returns to the floor, but this time he sits upright, and brings his hands together. At first he looks up, into the shadowy rafters overhead, then feels foolish, and concentrates on his hands instead.

How did he do this before? It used to be easy, surely? In the chapel at Lindisfarne, he would join his voice in prayer with a hundred others every day; now a curtain drops over the memory. Half-remembered words, in half-remembered rooms. They trip and stumble on his tongue, and other words are dredged up along with them, unbidden; words he heard spelled over wintery long-hall fires, or blown about in the breeze over summer beaches. It’s this host of fragmented voices that finally carries him down into sleep, and holds him fast until morning comes. 

Morning, pale and yellow. It brings with it the young man, and the young man brings more food. Bread and cheese, and a cup of milk, so fresh it’s still warm. He bustles around the church, clearing away the burnt out candles, and even slips through the gate and into the chancel, to bustle mysteriously in there as well. At one point it goes very quiet, and Athelstan thinks he must be praying, as he emerges looking self-conscious and keeps his head bowed as he leaves. But in the evening, there’s more bread and milk, and even meat this time. 

“Stay, talk,” Athelstan says to him, as the young man places the dishes on the floor. He hesitates, but he does stay, perching on one of the wooden benches that has been hastily pushed up against the wall to make room for the makeshift sick-bed, and watches with no small amount of consternation on his face as Athelstan tears the bread apart with his teeth.

“You must be the priest here,” Athelstan says around a mouthful.

“Yes,” the man replies, a tinge of pride in his voice. 

“So where is here?” 

“It’s… I’m not sure I should tell you that,” he says. When Athelstan stares at him, he flinches and looks sharply down at his hands, twisted in his lap. “Sorry.”

“How far away is the bishop’s seat, then?” Athelstan tries again.

“More than a days ride, I think,” says the priest. 

“So you have to keep me here for at least one more day,” Athelstan says coolly. The priest’s nose flares slightly, but - good for him - he manages not to flinch this time. 

“There are two men stationed outside the door.” He replies, a little haughtily. Athelstan cocks an eyebrow at him, and dives back into the bread. The priest waits for him to finish before he speaks again. 

“What was it like, living with the Northmen?”

The question doesn’t catch Athelstan off guard, but still, what can he say? Whatever language he uses, it won’t be enough.

“It’s hard to describe.”

The priest just nods eagerly at him to continue. 

“I worked with them on their farm,” he shrugs. “They grow crops and keeps animals just as we do.”

“But they’re not the same as us. They worship false gods,” the priest whispers with a kind of giddy horror. “And they make sacrifices to them, don’t they?” 

Athelstan sighs. “They live according to their own laws and beliefs. They find our way of doing things equally strange.”

The priest frowns in dissatisfaction and Athelstan can understand why; if he had given such a dully diplomatic answer to Ragnar, it would have been received with pure contempt. _Come on Athelstan,_ he’d say, punching his arm, _tell me how you really feel._ It had always been that way, almost from the first time they spoke, captor to captured. The thing Ragnar demanded above all was Athelstan’s honesty, and over the years he had variously bullied, scolded, teased and coaxed it out of him. Their relationship has involved a gradual untying of Athelstan’s tongue. 

“It’s true that they do often make sacrifices. Usually animals, but on very sacred occasions and in times of great need they might choose people too. They consider these sacrifices to be honourable.” He pauses. “They intended to sacrifice me once.”

The priest’s mouth drops open. 

“What happened?” He asks with a gasp.

“The man who enslaved me told me we were making a kind of pilgrimage, to a holy place many miles from their hometown. We travelled across wild country to a great plain where the Northmen have their temple. They believe that it was founded by one of their gods, who inhabited that place, and that it was he who began the tradition of slaughter there. Ragnar - my captor - told me that they travelled to the temple every nine years, and that in the grove nearby they would sacrifice nine of every male creature: cows, goats, horses, dogs… and men. He told me that so much blood had been shed there that every single individual tree in that place was holy. We spent the night beneath the trees. There was food, and wine, and singing. It was a celebration. One last night at the end of the world -”

His voice shutters suddenly, closing around the memory. _One last night._ On the other side of that thin, grey morning, before the fires had dwindled to nothing, and the blood began to flow. The fires still burned strong, the air was thick and sweet with smoke, and his blood was drugged and hot…

“I didn’t know that he intended for it to be me.” he says with a sigh. “If I had known…”

There’s a pregnant silence, and then the priest whispers, “how did you survive?”

“It must have been Christ protecting me,” says Athelstan. He remembers a conversation with Ragnar, before they left for England. _Perhaps God is not finished with me yet._ He pushes it down. He pushes down, too, the note of wryness that can’t help but creep into his voice. “They found the crucifix I kept hidden on my person. My Christian faith made me ineligible. It’s almost absurd, in any other circumstances they would not be so exacting. Their human sacrifices need not be voluntary or even willing.”

“How barbaric.” The priest sniffs with an air of finality. “They are fools to believe our holy faith besmirches theirs.”

“Absurd,” Athelstan repeats, touching the silver band beneath his sleeve.

“The man you speak of, your captor. Were you close?” 

Athelstan starts. _Careful now._ “We lived so closely together for years. We found a kind of peace between us,” he says. 

“Even though he wanted you to die?”

“He could have killed me at any time he wanted,” Athelstan says, even though, that’s not quite true either.

“Hm. I heard they poured blood on the altars at Lindisfarne, as a sacrifice. Did you see it?”

“No. No! That’s obscene.”

“But they did fill the old Bishop of Winchester with arrows, inside his own church. And they cut his throat. I know that much is true.”

The young man’s cheeks bloom like fresh roses as he searches Athelstan’s face for some confirmation of that horrible thing. The gorge rises in Athelstan’s throat, and because he’s thinking of Ragnar, and of honesty, he forces himself to speak. 

“They didn’t cut the bishop’s throat,” he whispers. “I did that.”

The priest freezes. “What?”

“He was dead either way. I cut his throat to make it faster.”

An awful silence, and then the young man stands, clumsy with horror, his face screwed up. “I will pray for your soul!” he cries, and rushes away. The light in the room seems to recede with him, and suddenly Athelstan is afraid - he can’t stand to be left alone again in the cold church, with the candles burnt low and almost dying.

“Wait!” he cries, as the priest reaches the door. “Wait!” He hears the pause behind him, but he can’t bear to look. His mouth is dry. Dream voices won’t hold him fast tonight. Neither will his miserable failures of prayers. He needs to hear the words again, after such a long time. Words spoken in prayer, but spoken to him, softly and quietly, from lips not his own - from the lips of a brother. 

“Please stay. Please pray with me. I want to pray -” His voice rises frighteningly high, and breaks off. 

He almost can’t believe it when he hears the church door close softly, and the priest returns to kneel beside him. Wordlessly, he helps Athelstan up from the dirtied bed of straw, and walks with him to the chancel. Behind the archway the space is tiny, only a few yards in each direction. In the candlelight, the altar glows with colour. Red, gold, green. The priest helps Athelstan to his knees in front of the crucifix, which winks at them in the dancing light of the flame. Athelstan takes his hand, and clings to it. 

“It’s been a long time since I prayed with anyone else,” he says. 

“It’s alright. I’ll guide you.” The priest holds his hand gently in his lap. 

They begin to pray. The Paternoster. The priest goes first, leading Athelstan into the chant. At first he keeps his eyes nervously open, watching the expression on the priest’s face. Innocent, placid. His eyes are closed, and the fair lashes tremble against those roses in his cheeks. The words are soft, silvery things, unspooling like music as the candles wink out one by one around them. Their rhythm is bound up in his body, the rhythm he couldn’t find before, but now as he speaks he feels that he is unravelling too, coming apart as the words dance and disperse. He shudders and lets his forehead fall forward against the gate. Beyond it - a glimpse of sky through a narrow window, a spray of familiar stars. His world has changed beyond recognition since the last time he said these words in communion with another, instead of stuttered alone, in the dark, far from home. 

“Sed libera nos a malo.”

_Deliver us from evil._

They say the words over and over, until Athelstan falls asleep.

When he wakes, he knows something is wrong. It’s not morning. How long has he slept? There’s a bustling and twittering of voices outside, people calling to one another, the stamp of horses feet. Has the bishop come already? He’s back on the straw bed, though he can’t remember moving. He rolls over in the blankets, and as he does, the sense of wrongness surges through him again. 

His bindings. They’ve been unwound. 

He lurches to his feet, bracing himself for pain, but his side only aches dully, like a bruise. He staggers through the porch and presses his ear to the heavy wooden door at the entrance. There’s a burst of laughter right beside where his ear is pressed to the wood, as clear and immediate as if the guards are beside him in the church. And beyond their joking voices, a growing excitement, the murmuring voices of a crowd.

He reels away from the door, into the nave, and looks around. Beyond the archway, sunlight renders the altar’s painted colours stark and bright. The window. Could he reach it? Is the gate still locked? No time to investigate - there’s a creak, a rush of noise leaks in then fades abruptly with the opening and closing of the door. He flings himself to the floor, burying his head in his arms. A quick patter of feet, and the priest appears. He sees him approach through half-closed eyes, and Athelstan half turns, peering upwards as if he’s just woken. 

“Are you well?” the priest asks, and his delicate face twists with pity. Athelstan’s stomach turns, like soured milk.

“You’ve slept a long time,” the priest explains. “A rider has come ahead of the bishop’s retinue. He’ll be here soon.” He takes a step towards Athelstan, busy and purposeful, the smile on his face too kind, too knowing.

Athelstan stays low to the ground, coiled in on himself. The priest sees, and frowns.

“What have you done?” Athelstan says.

“Be easy,” the priest replies. It’s as if he’s calming an agitated horse. He crouches at Athelstan’s feet, and stretches out a hand.

“Don’t come near me,” Athelstan snarls.

“But you’re safe now. You’re free! Of the Northmen, and whatever they’ve done to you. They can’t hurt you here. You don’t need to hide any longer.”

Perhaps the boy is right. Perhaps he would be freed, and allowed to live, if he confesses. If he cries in remorse, tears at his clothes and beats his breast, then perhaps he might walk out of this place alive. But would it be freedom, truly?

It wouldn’t be a confession at all. He would have to lie. To say he was never a monk. 

What life might they deign him to live then? Nothing recognisable; nothing his own.

The band around his wrist flashes a warning. 

“You have to let me go," he says, abruptly. The time for care, for diplomacy, is over. "You must realise that they are going to kill me otherwise?"

“I… It’s not for me to judge…”

“But you do judge me.”

“The Lord is merciful,” the priest insists.

“Men are not. I’ll be put to death, you know I will. You have to let me go.”

“Whatever the bishop decrees, it will be God’s will.”

“You’re a little fool,” Athelstan hisses, and the priest’s face twists again, this time in indignation.

He lunges forward and grabs Athelstan by the waist and arm. “I was charged to keep you here,” he pants, the blood rising in his cheeks, “and I will.”

He’s young, and strong. Hale as an ox. But like those creatures, he is made for the wide Wessex fields, for work that is hard, but slow, and unbloody. He is made for peace, not the heat, the heart-hammering pace of battle. Athelstan has a keen knowledge of both. He knows how to choose between them.

He twists the arm that the priest is holding round and down, freeing himself. There’s pain - he ignores it, and throws his whole weight forward to overbalance the priest, who falls backwards with a yelp, his face now purple with mingling disbelief and anger. Athelstan tries to stand, but the priest shoots out a hand and grabs his ankle, toppling him heavily on his side. His head explodes in agony as it cracks against the flagstones. For a second, Athelstan lies there winded. The roof blurs and vanishes above him like smoke. 

He can hear the priest somewhere near his feet, scrambling upright. Athelstan squints through watering eyes and sees him staggering towards the door, shouting towards it for help. The world crashes back into focus. 

There’s no time, no time - he rolls over and crawls, half on his knees, half upright, towards the priest, dragging himself along by the scattered benches. He cries out in pain as his wound seems to tear open again, clutches at a bench until his knuckles almost pop from their sockets, and the priest looks back over his shoulder, disgust contorting his pretty features beyond recognition. He’s little more than a yard from the door. He turns towards it again, words forming on his lips - they’ll hear it this time, even over the crowd, he’s too close - and Athelstan flings himself up and forward one final, desperate time, throwing his arm over the priest’s shoulder and hooking it under his chin. The priest chokes out a scream, abruptly arrested by Athelstan’s elbow yanking his head up as he drags him backwards, a few steps, back into the church, before his own feet give way and they’re both crashing to the floor again. 

The priest lands squarely on top of him and Athelstan wriggles like a fish, escaping out from underneath his solid weight. But the priest has already flipped over, he’s kneeling and half falling over Athelstan. One hand scrabbles at his chest, one clamps over his face as, gasping with the effort, he inches his fingers over Athelstan’s mouth and nose, crawling towards his eyes.

“Heathen bitch,” he gasps, his nails dragging at Athelstan’s cheeks. 

Athelstan screams. He doesn’t recognise the sound. Even as it tears from him, it belongs to someone else, a body and a voice he left behind long ago. He feels only calm, like being submerged in bright blue water. Even the pain detaches from him. His hands drop from the priest’s solid forearms, stretching left and right. On his left, his fingers find the cool ceramic curve of the water pitcher. He grips it, and slams it into the side of the priest’s head. 

It smashes instantly. The priest jerks away, and Athelstan picks up the dish this time and rams it upwards into the soft flesh under his jaw. It makes a hideous crunching sound, and the priest slumps sideways and slithers off Athelstan to the floor. 

Athelstan pulls himself backwards. Tiny slivers of pottery tear at his palms. He blinks, white dust stings in his eyes. When he spits it comes out pink with more dust, and blood. He crawls away from where the priest lies. He can’t see his face anymore, but he can hear a retching, choking moan, thin and high. A hand creeps feebly towards the black and red mess behind the priest’s ear.

A bunch of keys hang from his belt, and Athelstan takes them without ceremony, ignoring the wavering hand. He turns his back on the priest and looks around, dragging his jacket over his shoulders. Behind the narrow archway, the altar still glows with colour, the crucifix winks speechlessly. He unlocks the gate and surveys the chancel window in daylight. It’s at his shoulder height, and narrow, barely more than an arrow slit. But he’s lean. He’ll fit through. He drags the altar over to it, hissing through his teeth as his body shrieks in protest. Outside the window is a small graveyard, bounded by a shaggy hedge. The background chatter of voices is fainter here; the village proper must be to the west, or north. On this side it’s quiet. Somewhere nearby a stream is murmuring. He swings his feet through first, wriggles sideways, and drops like a cat to the ground. 

He finds the stream in the thicket beyond the hedge. Not so long ago, they would have baptised people in it, before they built the church. He has no idea where he is, or where the sea is, but the water beckons and so he does the only thing he can think of, and scrambles down the bank into the shallows. 

He’ll follow it as far as he can. Maybe it will take him to the sea. Maybe it won’t. Maybe they’ll catch him before he finds out where it leads - but he can’t think about that now. Now, it’s forwards, or nothing. 

Head down, bent at the waist, hugging the undone jacket around him, he moves as fast as his aching body will permit. The stream is wide and meandering, and along its shallow banks barely an inch of water shimmers bright and slow over the chalky bed. It makes an easy path as he stumbles through the slow-moving water. 

But it’s hot. Trees and shrubs have swallowed the winding route that the stream takes through the fields, and under the thick canopy is a shimmering warmth. Deeper pools open towards the centre of the stream, and in the corner of his eye he can see the dark shapes of fish moving at the bottom. If only he could become one of them, and hide down there under the duckweed.

He keeps the pace for what he thinks is at least an hour, before thinking, _fuck it,_ shrugging off the thick jacket and sinking to his knees. He brings cupped handfuls of water to his mouth, and it’s so sweet - _so good_ \- he bends over and puts his whole face in the water, sucking it down in long, deep gasps. Maybe he should get in anyway, even if he can’t transform into a fish. He could sit in the lazy current and let it transport him downstream. It would be good to not have to think any more, to let the river do the thinking, to let himself be tossed about in the turns and eddies of that deeper, older consciousness. Already, his wilful thoughts are drifting back upstream, where he can’t allow himself to go.

He wonders vaguely if the young priest is dead. If he is, that would make three people whom he has killed. Not soldiers in a battle - that’s different - but ordinary men who had chosen quiet lives of prayer and devotion. He made the same choice once. Now he has denied it, three times, in blood. He half expects a cock to crow. The monk, the bishop, and the now the priest - they might be seen as martyrs, even saints one day. Is the greater crime that he came back, or that he left in the first place? He didn’t offer himself up as those men did, allowing themselves to be struck down for the glory of God. Instead, he begged Ragnar for his life in an alien language, treachery like poison on his tongue. _Apostate,_ the old bishop had called him. _Obscenity._ That’s what they would punish him for.

 _And yet,_ he thinks, _there’s a clash between what I think I ought to feel, and what I do feel._ The edge is ill-defined and porous; it is full of holes. One smashes, where the other erodes. Chambers and caverns open, down which he is dashed like spindrift on the waves. _Do I feel sorry that I looked back at Ragnar and spoke to him that day? Do I feel shame that I asked to live?_ At that he draws himself up slowly on his heels and lets his head fall back. _I don’t feel shame,_ he thinks. _I wanted life then, and I want it now._ To admit differently would be a waste. Shame is a waste.

“It is one thing to use a weapon,” Ragnar had said to him as they sparred on the beach in Kattegat, his sword at Athelstan’s throat, “but another to kill.”

He had flung him to the ground and pinned him under his weight, lodging the sword in the sand inches from Athelstan’s head.

“Never hesitate,” he whispered over him, his eyes blank and cold.

Later in the evening, in the heady firelight and smoke of the long-hall, Ragnar had pressed a cup into Athelstan’s hands and put an arm around his shoulder, all warmth again.

“My light-footed one,” he had said, his own cup raised like a toast. Half spoken to Athelstan, half to their gathered friends, who watched in amusement. “You were daring today.”

“Next time I’ll have you,” Athelstan had smiled at the group, his face glowing from the fire. 

“Perhaps, perhaps,” Ragnar had laughed, tightening his hold around him, giving him a little shake. And then he spoke quietly, to Athelstan alone. “You fight like a man for whom the separation between life and death is thin as the skin on water, and this pleases me. This is Viking.”

_Thin as the skin on water._ He thinks that is how the world of reality, of touch and taste, seems in comparison to the world he feels inside him. Like a luminous skin, stretched over something ethereal and billowing, dark and vast.

He splashes water over the wound in his side. Dried blood crumbles away under his fingers and a little fresh stuff seeps out, but it seems to be healing. It feels more like a bruise now than anything else, a more familiar pain. He draws the tunic back down over it, and picks himself up. Despite the ache in his body, a kind of pleasure creeps over him as he moves on, slower now. He lifts his nose and sniffs at the air like a dog. Between the dark trunks of ash and alder is a hot, green shade that thickens on the curdling point of summer. It is filled with smells of all the things that Ragnar wanted - that England promised. Wild garlic in the hedge, fat trout in the river, crabapples moulding where they fall. It’s loam and rich soil, smells of rotting and dying that were also the smells of life. Ragnar hadn’t spoken of it in so many words, but Athelstan had watched his nose twitching as they wandered through Wessex with the raiding party.

Before Ragnar was earl, he was a farmer, and a fisherman. He knew the land and waters around his home more intimately than anyone; he knew in which shaded inlets the fish gathered, depending on the hour and the season, whether the moon was waxing or waning, and maybe a hundred other mysterious and possibly mystical factors besides. He could drop a lure with such gentleness straight down between the swimming fish that they scarcely noticed the dark shape of the line, the shadow over the water. Surely the gods favoured him even back then. It was a kind of favour that stories and songs would never bother to speak of, but it was real. 

Now he was a fisher of men. He had cast his net, and enthralled a whole people; they would follow him anywhere. They had only been waiting for him to show them where to go next. Before he had announced the summer raids, a sense of expectation had laid over Kattegat like a low cloud, promising thunder. For Ragnar, Athelstan knew, the sense of a storm had brought memories surfacing from deep places like sunken timbers, bleached white from long years in the dark. 

One morning he had found the earl in the long hall, wrestling something down from the gloom below the rafters where they strung things up for storage. 

As he walks on, he allows himself to remember. 

_____

_The boat._

_You remember it too?_

_We took it out on the water._

_It feels so long ago now, like it happened in a dream._

_But it wasn’t a dream, unless we had the same one. It was real, it happened. I asked you to come with me to England, and I told you I would keep you safe._

_You promised no such thing._

_But I meant to. I never meant to leave you._

_Now you tell me. What are you remembering?_

_____

“Fetch some oars, if you’re coming.” Ragnar spoke without turning. 

One hand steadied the elegant stern of the little boat, tapping it with his fingers. Full of his old impatient energy. Athelstan smiled as he retrieved the oars from the dock, threw them into the boat, and sprang in lightly behind them. He balanced himself against the bow as Ragnar pushed them out into the open water. 

They had struck straight out from the dock at first, pulling against the wind that swept around the fjord from the sea. It demanded effort, and the two men spoke little as they set out, apart from a few terse instructions that Ragnar barked over his shoulder. Once Kattegat receded behind them, he shouted a command and together they heaved on one side, tacking towards the eastern side of the fjord. Athelstan snarled into the motion, his left shoulder straining almost out of its socket as they turned through the eye of the wind.

Then the wind was behind them, and the boat almost flew. It was beautifully made, the narrow hull tracking easily through the water. Despite the help the wind gave them, Ragnar still kept the pace relentlessly. Athelstan found himself focusing on Ragnar’s back as he beat out the time, the leathers he wore straining and then bunching as he dragged the oars forwards and back, forwards and back. 

Before Lagertha and Bjorn left, before Gyda and the baby were lost, before Uppsala, and Earl Haraldsson’s death, Ragnar had built this boat. It was of a kind the Northmen called a faering, small and compact, sleekly built with neat, overlapping planks, and finished with dark pine-tar on the outside. Floki had guided Ragnar through its construction, and he had presented it to Bjorn as a gift.

The boy had been so full of resentment in the long, fraught months after Ragnar returned from Northumbria with Athelstan in tow. He hardly laughed, and his main source of amusement was Athelstan’s own pain, which in those days had been a blunt and obvious thing that Athelstan carried as heavily as the rope around his neck. He laughed in spite if Athelstan made a mistake on the farm, or when the unfamiliar language of the Northmen tripped on his tongue. The rest of the time, he might be surly and stubborn. If he spoke it was often only in anger, so that sometimes Ragnar even beat him for his insolence. His sullenness only grew in the days that followed a beating. The faering was a gesture, Athelstan knew. An apology. It was made for two, with two sets of oars; a man and a boy would be more than comfortable in it, even if the boy was growing quick as a birch tree…

Bjorn will be a young man now. It is strange to think of, and Athelstan handled the thought delicately, turning it over in his mind like an interesting stone. Will he be as tall as Ragnar, or taller? Will he have mellowed, or had his anger seethed for all these years? 

They rowed for over an hour, falling into their individual silences. The water wound between two steep cliffs like a gauge made by a massive finger. The air was palpitant with hidden waterfalls. A giant landscape, made from the bones of a giant. Lagertha told him the story first, in her low, frightening, wonderful voice that she used for stories. Ymir, the giant torn apart by the gods, and used to fashion the earth and the sky. The seas, his blood. The mountains, his bones. The earth came from his flesh, sowed with hair that became trees and plants. No other place, he thought, could inspire so brutal a history. But here, it feels real. They drew closer to the deeply forested side of the fjord, where only a thin strip of stony shore held the trees back from tumbling right down the ridge and into the water. The line between the salt-washed stones and lush forest was abrupt. What Athelstan always wanted to know, but didn’t know how to ask, was whether the giant still lived, in the brutalised fragments of his body? Did the tide surge, because his blood still beat? And if the clouds in the sky were the flung-out remnants of his brains, did they still spark, could they still dream? He thought that for a giant, time must pass differently than for mortal men. A man’s life must vanish in the space between heartbeats.

Lagertha had looked at him curiously when he asked her these questions. It was a cruel autumn, he had been in their home only a few months. They were hunkered together around the fire with bowls of broth cupped in their hands, and she looked particularly pagan in the firelight with her unwashed hair flying in all directions and casting weird, spiky shadows over her face. It frightened him, to give a voice to these new and complicated thoughts that swirled inside him. But he felt compelled to, somehow, by the firelight and smell of woodsmoke, the cup of ale in his belly and the warmth of Lagertha’s body pressing tight against his. “Perhaps you are right, priest,” she said, back when they still addressed him by that title, always faintly mocking. And then, because it was like she could see right through him - “does that frighten you?” She had been kind enough to whisper it so that her children wouldn’t hear, but Ragnar, seated on her other side, had watched them both with eyes alive with mirth, and even laughed aloud when Athelstan shook his head.

Now he allowed his mind to wander, enjoying the tug in all directions as he considered such wild possibilities, all sense of certainty dissolving. Once he had been frightened by such thoughts. All he was certain of now was how to be uncertain. But that in itself was something to cling to, a boat spinning in a wild current. It was also something to delight in, to let go and enjoy.

At last they drew into a quiet inlet, rounding a rocky promontory that dropped almost vertically into the water, skirting close to the vertiginous shoreline. The cliff curved around the inlet on one side, and under it the wind dropped to almost nothing. On the other side of the bay, to the south and east, great shelves of rock had at some time splintered and sloughed away from the cliff. Now they seemed to slide endlessly into the water, gentle plateaus of black rock creeping with vegetation from the forest above. They contained a sense of frozen motion, like their catastrophic rending from the cliff face was still unfolding, but in giant-time, unrecognisable to man. To the two men in the boat, the little inlet was still, the water absolutely calm. No commotion in it, but the boat. 

“Are we fishing?” Athelstan said companionably, when they stopped and pulled in the oars. There was a tangle of lines and hooks in the bottom of the boat and he sifted through them carefully with one hand until he found an end, and began to draw it out of the pile.

“This will take a while.” He threw some towards Ragnar’s feet. “We haven’t fished together in a long time.”

Ragnar didn't reply, but bent down to pick up a handful of the lines.

They both worked at them for a while, attempting to pull them apart. The silence started to press on Athelstan, like the looming cliffs overhead.

“I find I have been thinking much about the past recently,” Athelstan broke the silence, watching the top of Ragnar’s head carefully. His large hands plucked at the knots with a deftness that was always surprising, teasing them gently apart. “I think of Gyda often,” he said softly, and saw Ragnar’s shoulders square almost imperceptibly. He saw, though, the tiniest of things, a gift that came with time and close study.

“Her smile. Her voice,” he persisted. “How she and Bjorn used to play with the goats. The time they set them loose and you had to chase them all over the beach before you could round them up again.” He laughed at the memory. “She was so sweet. When we went to Uppsala, she held my hand the whole way there.”

The lines had gone slack in his hands. Now Ragnar looked up, sharply. 

“She was sweet,” he said, his voice tight. He paused, clearly wrestling with something. “You know… she didn’t know,’ he said at last. “About the sacrifice.”

Athelstan looked him over in surprise. Even afterwards, Ragnar had barely acknowledged what had happened in Uppsala to him. And then Gyda was gone, and Lagertha and Bjorn had left, and the moment had passed. 

“Of course,” he said. “She couldn’t hide a thing like that. She was an angel.”

“An angel?” Ragnar’s voice was hoarse.

“Heavenly beings. Attendants to God.”

“My daughter had no knowledge of your god,” Ragnar frowned. “How could she be an attendant to him?”

“I meant no offence,” Athelstan said. I only mean that she was good. Innocent. More so than any of the rest of us.”

The water glowed blue around them, as if they were drifting across a giant eye. Ragnar nodded, and quickly looked away, across the fjord. He cleared his throat.

“I have been thinking about the past often too. Your face especially recalls many memories for me. They are difficult things to recall, but that isn’t your fault.” Ragnar sighed heavily. “I have made more mistakes than any man should be allowed. How can anyone believe the gods favour me now?”

“You are the earl,” Athelstan said slowly. “With a wife and two healthy sons waiting for you in Kattegat, and another son besides -”

“Another, yes. If Bjorn still lives, he will be a grown man now. I may not even recognise him, if I crossed paths with him again.”

“You would recognise him. I believe you would.”

Ragnar shook his head. “How can you be so sure of these things?”

Athelstan shrugged. “I’ve always been a man of faith,” he said simply. Ragnar shot him a look of shrewd appraisal, which Athelstan returned plainly.

“Here,” Ragnar threw something towards him. An untangled line, with a barbed hook gleaming at one end. He had pulled two of them out from the pile, barely looking at what he was doing, his hands as nimble and patient as Gyda's once were. Athelstan dropped the knotty mess that he was gradually making knottier and messier, and wound the line around his hand until it was in a manageable reel. Below the hook, he fixed one of the smooth, bored stones that had been collected and left behind in the faering. Probably by Bjorn. A long time ago. Funny how time can fold down so small it will fit amongst a collection of stones at the bottom of a boat.

“And… what about Lagertha?” Athelstan ventured. 

“What about her?”

“I miss her,” he shrugged again. “Don’t you?”

Ragnar sucked in a long breath and blew it out noisily through his lips. “Won’t you shut up, Athelstan? I really don’t want to think about any fucking women right now.”

Athelstan snorted. Ragnar flashed him a sarcastic grimace, but it softened into a real, sheepish grin. He shook his head.

“Just fish with me, Athelstan, will you? I need a moment’s peace.”

Athelstan picked up another stone from near his feet. Small as the inside of a child’s palm, the hole in it tinier than his little finger. He held it up to the sky; briefly, another blue eye flashed at him. He tossed it, lightly, into Ragnar’s lap. 

They untangled more lines, passing them back and forth, fixing tiny barbed hooks along their lengths and weighting the ends with stones, then casting them out one by one in a great radiating web around the boat. Under the bright eye of the sun everything in the boat took on a startling clarity. His hands were brown as a tree, and knotty from hard work. They looked like Ragnar’s hands. He went from line to line, testing their weights. Ragnar did the same. They moved in unison, held in an invisible balance at either end of the boat.

But over an hour later only a few small fish had tugged, and the smallest of these Ragnar had thrown back into the bay, not worth keeping. For a long time he had stayed hanging over the water, watching for movement below them. They tested the lines every now and again, but eventually Athelstan lay back in the boat and closed his eyes. He drifted in and out of sleep, lulled by the music of waves lapping at the shore, with the deeper bass of waterfalls echoing somewhere in the distance. Ragnar’s crouched shape remained unchanged, every time he emerged, like a swimmer, from the drowsing pull of sleep. 

“They’re not biting today,” he murmured at last.

“No. Perhaps I’ve lost my touch.” Ragnar sighed and dropped his head between his knees.

“There is something else I wanted to tell you,” he said quietly. Something in his tone brought Athelstan out of his reverie, and he sat up at once, alert. “I mean to raid in England this year.”

Athelstan frowned down at their pitiful haul of fish. England swelled in his mind’s eye, a peach ripe for the plucking. “I had some idea…” he said, cautiously.

“I wanted you to know, before anyone else.”

“Thank you.”

“We will need your help with the language. So I want you to come with us.”

“I see.”

“Well? Will you come?”

“It’s been more than four years since I left. A long time.”

“Not so long, for our hearts.” Ragnar was eyeing him.

“What do you mean?”

“A few passing seasons are nothing. Men’s hearts change far more slowly. I want you to come with us to England. But if you do, I want to know for certain that you are with us.”

Athelstan had a wild urge to laugh. “And how do I prove that to you?”

“You can’t,” Ragnar said slowly. “Not until we are there.”

_____

Athelstan dreams that the Wessex fields have become a wide sea. Silver-green waves ripple through the grasses, wind-cast. He dreams of a plough like a boat, sailing over the green, scattering seagulls in its wake. Ragnar stands at its helm. He guides the nodding oxen forwards through the waves.

The image changes when Ragnar turns to him. With the fluid movement of a dream, he’s standing in front of Athelstan. The sea is still there somewhere, on the periphery, a tidal surge in Athelstan’s ears, roaring further out. But close around him is dark and flickering, he sees only Ragnar’s lambent gaze. Ragnar smiles, stretches out his arms, a cross. Then his face changes too, becomes fine-boned and pointed. The smile, beatific. It’s Athelstan’s face, he’s watching himself, and as the other Athelstan smiles at him a tiny red line opens like an eye on his forehead, then another and another, encircling his scalp, and then the blood is sheeting down like a river in spring. 

He wakes, surging up from the ground with a cry. There’s movement between the trees, and flickering lights of torches. Someone hears his shout, and makes some call or sign. He senses rather than sees a circle tightening around him. He would run, but the vanishing lights are confusing, and when he squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again, it’s the vision of his own blood that fills them up. 

A twig cracks behind him, a heavy hand tears his shoulder backwards and drives a fist into his mouth, sending him to the floor. Another fist, a boot to his stomach. They truss his hands and feet and throw him over a horse. 

It’s morning before they reach the village, but he still can’t see his captors, only the solid flank of the horse. His lip is split and swollen. His arms feel like they are being dragged from their sockets, stretched above his head, and his chest is tender from every step. He can only breathe into the horse’s smooth hide, seeking comfort in the warm animal smell. 

They deposit him back on the floor of the church. The wreckage he left behind has been swept away, and the priest is nowhere to be seen. Does he live? Athelstan mumbles this question round his swollen lip, but nothing recognisable comes out. He can’t focus properly on the figures that swim on the edges of his vision. When he tries to sit up they surge forward and force him back to the ground. It’s from this humiliated vantage point that he first sees the bishop, a heavy figure in a dazzlingly purple robe, sweeping imperiously towards him. You can paint a lump of clay, he thinks dully. Doesn’t make it pretty.

“Pick him up, for goodness’ sake!”

Someone drags him upright. 

“So you are the Saxon who came here with the Northmen? To pillage our land like thieves, to desecrate our holy places?”

“No,” Athelstan mumbles, painfully forcing out the words. “I’m one… of you…”

“Oh! Am I mistaken? You _didn’t_ fight with them?”

He’s struggling to stay upright. “I… fought,” he says thickly. “To stay… alive. I was… a monk.”

The bishop steps closer, and Athelstan forces himself not to flinch. The soldiers flank them, motionless a few feet away. There’s a horrible stillness in the room. 

“I know where you came from. We heard all about what happened at Lindisfarne, even here in Wessex. It was a great tragedy. So many of our brothers lost, so many treasures stolen,” he shakes his head, but his eyes never leave Athelstan’s face. “And here you are now, a most curious sight. Tell me, are you like the prodigal son, returning to our shores? Do you seek our forgiveness?”

Athelstan’s glares upwards from under heavy eyelids. “God’s forgiveness… surely?”

The bishop’s eyes narrow. “Do you know what I find really curious?” he says, his voice low, almost conspiratorial. “These clothes. That piece of finery I see below your sleeve. These are not the trappings of a captive, nor a slave.” The bishop is whispering now, he has plucked Athelstan’s hand from his lap and is idly fingering the silver torc around his wrist. Athelstan resists every urge he has to wrench himself backwards, to tear himself away from this man’s mockery, his grasping hatred. He stares at the hand that closes on his wrist as if it’s a slab of dead meat. “So tell me, what did you offer them, to spare your life at Lindisfarne?” Athelstan’s head snaps up again, and delight flares cruelly in the bishop’s face. “How deeply have you betrayed the Lord? How deeply have you betrayed yourself?” 

“No,” Athelstan snarls. _“No.”_

“Confess,” the bishop breathes. “And you can go to your death knowing that God is merciful.”

“I fought to survive,” Athelstan says again. “Nothing to confess.”

“Oh yes, you survived. And once you had betrayed Him, Judas, they made you one of their own, did they? Fed and clothed you?” He turns the torc round so that the raven heads on each end are facing upwards. “Did you worship their gods together, their false idols? Did you thieve and murder in their name? Did you break your vows, and lie with their women? Did you whore yourself, for silver, and a safe bed?”

“No!” Athelstan cries. 

“I see you for what you are. If you won’t confess, you’ll die unforgiven.” The bishop straightens up again, triumphant. He turns to leave, his silks swirling round his ankles. Athelstan senses the soldiers murmuring behind him, nudging one another. Then one steps forward, edging around Athelstan as if he is afraid to look at him. He hurries after the bishop, and whispers something in his ear. Athelstan sees the bishop freeze. When he turns again, his face is blanched. The expression on it changes from dismay to mistrust, and finally fear. 

He gestures the soldier towards Athelstan - “show me” - and Athelstan feels the knowledge of what is happening like a plunge into cold water. The skin of his world peeled away. He almost blacks out as the soldier grabs his jacket and fumbles at the hooks. The man draws it apart at last, twitches up the tunic, and kneels back to let the bishop see.

 _“Witch,”_ he breathes.

Athelstan lunges wildly at the soldier, teeth bared. He staggers out of Athelstan’s reach in fear, which quickly turns to fury. A gloved fist is enough to send Athelstan back to the floor, spitting blood.

“You never were a monk.” The bishop sneers. 

“I was,” Athelstan groans into the floor. “I was…”

“You’re a liar. No wonder the heathens loved you as their own. You have no love for God. They must have seen the emptiness in you, and been all too pleased to fill it up with idol-worship. Praising smoke. I see you, witch!”

“Smoke? You praise nothing but power and your own greed for it. You think you see me?” He laughs wildly, with red teeth. “I see you!”

The bishop spits at him. He waves the circle of soldiers closer, and they advance, fingering their weapons.

“The people cannot know this. Clothe him. Tell no one what you’ve seen.”

“What should we do with him?”

The bishop looks Athelstan over, lofty and cruel. “Crucify him,” he hisses.

_____

_And then?_

_And then._

_Did it hurt?_

_It hurt. Worse than anything has hurt before. Even God cried out, when they put him on the cross._

_I know that story - the cross, the crown, the nails. You’re telling me a story, but is it your own?_

_You can’t know everything._

_But I want to, when it’s you._

_There’s nothing more to say. Instead, the boat. The start of summer. That’s all I want to think of now. My heart is in a constant state of returning._

_____

There was a man who walked naked on the beach in the mornings, and told stories of the gods and Ragnorok around the fire to his children. In those days it seemed like he was made of marble, a perfect stone belonging almost out of time. Athelstan had seen statues made by the pagan people who lived in England and Francia before Christendom stretched its hand over those lands. They were fluid with caught motion, capturing light so that they seemed almost to glow from within. Ragnar had that glow, something internal that drew people to him. Even the old Athelstan, afraid every day for his life, had responded to it, had felt the urge to creep closer to that light. It was a strange feeling, changing the man in his imagination into the man who sat in front of him now. The Ragnar that pushed him out in the boat that afternoon was less marble, more granite. He was still dazzling, but with a darker glitter.

Abruptly, as if he sensed Athelstan’s thoughts, Ragnar stood up and started to shed his clothes. Athelstan watched lazily from beneath his lids. The sun was low behind them and touched with the gentle colour of afternoon on Ragnar’s body as it was slowly revealed; shoulders, dip of his spine, the gentle curve of his backside and thighs.

In the late afternoon warmth, Athelstan felt heavy and sunken with something. Like desire, or the deep pulling possibility of it, that tied like strings around his limbs and kept him sprawled against the prow as Ragnar towered above him. It felt like there was a point between them, a balancing point, that kept them fixed in those positions, one above and one below the other at either end of the boat. And the feeling of watchfulness was still there, which had grown between them as they worked, side by side watching the water, with sunlight flashing on its surface and dark shapes flickering beneath it. They were watching the water, and each other at the same time. 

Suddenly Ragnar placed one foot on the side of the boat and pitched forward between the web of fishing lines. In the moment when the boat was half tipped in the air, and he was scrambling to keep hold of the sides, Athelstan lost sight of him. The boat righted itself. Athelstan peered around, searching for Ragnar’s shape below the water. A minute passed, and another. 

Ragnar appeared, gasping and coughing, far enough away that Athelstan had to squint to see his face. His teeth were a flash of white when he laughed. 

“How is it?” Athelstan called.

“Warm as milk,” Ragnar shouted back. “You should come in.”

Athelstan lay back in the boat and closed his eyes. He heard Ragnar laugh, followed by a variety of splashing noises. 

“All these years here,” his voice murmured distantly. “And you still won’t swim?”

Out of the corner of his eyes he looked again - Ragnar had rolled onto his back and was floating, staring upwards. He seemed to have shed some of that granite hardness in the water, to have transformed, somehow. His body, where his clothes normally covered, was pale gold, startlingly paler than his weathered face and hands. He couldn’t walk naked on the beach in Kattegat, not as the earl. His life was knit into the village now, woven round his people and their expectations of him. Athelstan thought of the pool in which he used to bathe, the one Ragnar had shown him when he was still enslaved. He had given him freedom, however brief, to be alone. 

They never swam, at Lindisfarne. Even though they lived on an island, they barely saw the sea at their backs. He had never even dreamed of it before. Now all his dreams are water. 

Out loud, he said, “I swim. By myself.”

“Dull, Athelstan,” Ragnar’s voice floated over to him. A pause, then, “I can imagine you would swim very well, like a little silver-white fish.”

“A minnow, maybe.”

“Exactly like that. Impossible to catch.” 

There was more splashing, and then Ragnar’s face was beside him, his arms reaching up to hang from the side of the boat. 

“I do swim well,” Athelstan said to the wet, grinning face. "I’ve become much stronger in my time here.” 

“I remember you when we met. You were very young, barely more than a boy.”

Athelstan in fact had no idea of his own age. The monks assumed he was younger than he was, when he joined them. The Northmen thought the same. At the time he had no desire to correct either of them.

“I wasn’t so young,” he said. “Or frail. They worked us hard at Lindisfarne, in the fields and with the animals.”

“Still, you are much changed. It pleases me to see how strong you are. With us you were made a man.”

Athelstan shook his head. “I made myself a man, in England, a long time ago. Returning there… I don’t know. I see my ending where I began.”

“Endings are always found in beginnings. The acorn remembers the oak inside of it. It follows the germ of its death is in there too.” 

“Is that memory? Or is it fate?”

“Maybe they are the same, depending on which way you’re facing.”

Ragnar lifted up his arm, where his arm ring gleamed. Two ravens faced one another across the sun-browned skin. “Thought and memory,” he said. “They encircle the world every day, and are the source of Odin’s knowledge of all things. But if they fly in different directions round the world, do they watch events unfold differently too? Does one watch a reel unravelling, and the other see it coming together again?”

Athelstan thought for a moment, and then said, “Ragnarok.” Ragnar tilted his head questioningly. “It’s like Ragnarok,” he went on. “The gods know their destruction is coming. And they know how, and at whose hand. It’s not a prophecy, it’s a story. As if it’s already happened.”

“Yes, it is like that” Ragnar murmured, nodding. He grinned again, his eyes glittering. “You will be a Viking yet, my friend.”

When Ragnar heaved himself back into the boat, water surged in with him. It ran in rivulets from his hair and over his shoulders, through the soft fur on his stomach and legs, as he sprawled across the stern.

“I thought you said it was like milk?” Athelstan couldn’t help himself. He raised an eyebrow pointedly at Ragnar’s prick where it lay, shrinking, against his thigh. 

“I lied,” Ragnar said, all teeth. “It was fucking freezing.”

The boat was suddenly very small. Their legs brushed against one another in the centre. Neither was willing to move from where they lay, stretched out in the deep of the hull.

If he put his hands on Ragnar’s body, thought Athelstan, would he feel its memory bound up in it? Not just back to when it first formed, in the red lake inside his mother, but in the other direction too, all the way to its ending, wherever that might be? Flesh sloughing from the bones, the bones themselves dissolving into dust, and dispersing on the air. The reel unravelling, not to come together again.

And himself? He's more solid, these days. The soft, blurred edges of youth had been lost; his outline was sharper, clarified by the new clothes he had made for him. Fine clothing, that he paid dearly for, and had since steadfastly repaired and reinforced many times over. The clothes both fit and form him; a stout, quilted jacket compressed his chest and filled out his shoulders. A high collar round his throat was monkish, severe. Although time and again he had been tempted to grow his curls out long, he still kept them shorn tight to his skull. Among the wild-haired Northmen, he stood out, but he would do anyway. The men sneered at him sometimes for it; Floki still mockingly liked to call him priest. But Ragnar was favoured by the gods, and Athelstan was favoured by Ragnar, so they left him, for the most part, in peace. 

Women looked at him, too. He was aware that he had something that drew them to him. A litheness, a fineness in the bones of his face. Their interest did something to esteem him in the other mens’ eyes. He had even kissed some of them. But, when they asked him to lie with them, he refused every time. Since Thyri, he had never let himself go with them. Not even once.

Now Ragnar watched him from the other end of the boat. “So,” he said, suddenly serious. “Enough talk of the past. I want an answer.” When Athelstan didn’t reply, he continued. “Come on, Athelstan. What’s holding you back from saying yes to me?”

“Ask me again later,” Athelstan had groaned, dragging his palms over his eyes until he saw stars blooming. 

“I’m asking you now.” Ragnar tapped impatiently on his ankle. Athelstan sighed and lowered his hands.

“What if I died, in England?”

“Then I would have to find another Christian to follow me about.”

“Ragnar…”

“I’ll make sure you’re trained. Come on, Athelstan.”

“But you know what it means? If I do come with you? They’ll know I’m not one of you. I’ll be an apostate, punishable by death.”

“Ah…” Ragnar waved his hands dismissively. “Your god already disapproves of you. He has certainly disowned you, that is, if he hasn’t forgotten you entirely.” 

Athelstan choked a tiny laugh. “Fuck him. And fuck them,” Ragnar barrelled on, picking up momentum. “ Look -” he leaned towards Athelstan, with a nasty grin. “Come with me, and help me fuck them.”

Athelstan pulled away. “I don’t believe God is finished with me yet,” he said carefully. “That was made clear to me, in Uppsala.”

Ragnar was still drawn in close. His nakedness was emphatic, a weapon. Sheer physical presence designed to intimidate, at which Athelstan felt the briefest flash of pure resentment. “Maybe I am not finished with you either.”

_____

_Uppsala?_

_Yes. Unwind the reel back to the start._

_Even if it is painful to do so?_

_Especially then._

_____

Athelstan moved through the crowds, the world swimming around him. Leif came to him, and Ragnar, but they moved on.

Then Thyri was standing there. She moved in close, her eyes widening, large enough to swallow him. He was not much taller than she. He kissed her tentatively, their lips trembling together. Over her shoulder, when his eyes fluttered open, he saw Ragnar again, watching. The Northman brought a hand to his face, stroking his jaw. 

With a sudden urge, Athelstan took Thyri’s face between his hands. Eyes still open, he kissed down into her mouth. Her lips parted willingly, eagerly yielding to his pressure. He tasted her tongue with his own, warm and enveloping. Sliding over one another. He tasted a sourness, of milk or ale, and something deeper, earth and salt. It opened something in him. He couldn’t explain himself. He couldn’t explain.

She lifted her arms around him and dragged him deeper into the kiss. Her scent enveloped him, piercing and sharp. His nose and tongue were overwhelmed by her, her hair a dark blur over his eyes. They broke apart and she held him at arms length - holding him up, it felt like. Then she took his hand and led him away, and Athelstan realised this was the moment he had to stop this. He had to stop.

She led him into an empty tent. A vessel of water was waiting. There were blankets on the floor. When she began to undress him, finally, he stopped her.

“Enough,” he said. “No more.” 

“I must do this,” Thyri replied. 

“Who says you must?” He was confused, her words seemed to hold a meaning that slipped beyond his grasp.

She moved for his tunic again, and he clasped a hand around her arm. 

“Who asked you to do this?” He demanded.

Her gaze flickered to the entrance of the tent, and he turned. Ragnar stood just inside it. He had entered silently.

“Leave if you want,” Ragnar said to Thyri, and she threw down the cloth and ran. 

“What is all this for?” Athelstan pleaded.

“When we stand before the gods, we should be clean,” said Ragnar, peaceably. “You still have your Christian stink on you.”

The insult abraded him, but the sting was pure and tender, like pressing a new graze. Ragnar brought a hand to Athelstan’s chin, turning his face one way, and then the other. Athelstan submitted to the scrutiny. Ragnar’s presence was massive before him, filling his vision. A hand travelled to his shoulder and down, to wrap a thick finger and thumb around his wrist. Ragnar lifted their two hands between them, and Athelstan watched his own unfurling under the heavy palm as if it belonged to somebody else. Recklessness flooded through him, the recklessness that made him kiss Thyri, and let her lead him there, and almost let her undress him. 

He really was a fool that night.

_____

“You weren’t,” said Ragnar. 

Athelstan snorted again, and looked away over the water. 

“I was the fool.”

“It was years ago. Really, it doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters. I was the fool.”

“Because you wanted me to be the sacrifice in the first place? Or because you tried to trick me to get me there?”

_____

Ragnar leaned down, in the tent that night. His lips hovered at Athelstan’s jaw. Their breath, bitter with ale, clouded around them. 

“I’ll wash myself, if that’s what you want.” The words came out rigid and cold. Athelstan hated the sound of his voice. Ragnar stiffened, and then he strode away.

_____

In the boat, Ragnar spread his hands, accepting both accusations. 

“At the time I believed there was no way that I could make you understand what I was asking of you. Instead I chose to lie, and yes, I tricked you into coming with us. But I think you know that it was not out of disrespect or contempt that I chose you.”

“I do know that. I’ve told you myself, I understand the nature of sacrifice. Even if you think our Christian sacrifices are bloodless and toothless -”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Whatever the Church might think of me now, I really did choose to give my whole life up in service of God. I really did want to do that. It wasn’t an obligation, I did it because I was willing. Do you understand?”

“Athelstan… yes, I understand.”

“And even in Uppsala. I would have done it. I think I would have done it.”

“Which part?” Ragnar said, quietly. 

“Must you make me tell you? I don’t know. All of it, maybe. Whatever you asked of me.”

Ragnar sighed heavily. He reached forward and took Athelstan’s hand. “I have returned time and again to that memory,” he said, turning his hand over as if studying it for the first time. “I think about how I would change it. But that’s impossible. We can’t change the things we’ve done, as much as we would like to.”

Athelstan watched their hands, turning round and round like strange creatures underwater, like they had in the tent years before. He didn’t pull away, this time, but he shook his head. “I don’t know if I agree. I think much of life is us repeating our sins, over and over, until we learn to do better.”

“I’ve made mistakes; I don’t call them sins,” Ragnar chided, but his voice was gentle. “That’s your word.”

Athelstan didn’t reply. I am constantly translating myself for you, he thought. We’re foreigners to one another, maybe we always will be.

He sighed and extricated his hand from Ragnar’s, then stood and looked over the water. “Turn around,” he said, and Ragnar obeyed. He unhooked the jacket, and shrugged it off. Then the leather boots, the yards of linen circling his calves, and finally the breeches, all came off and were left in a heap in the boat.

The water - it really was cold - _it was so fucking cold!_ He heard a gleeful whoop behind him, just as he surfaced, and received a face-full of spray as Ragnar dove in again. Beneath him he felt a sense of depth opening up, filled with the dark shapes of huge sunken trees, and even deeper down, huge fish moving slow and sure between them. His own shadow slid over those shifting shapes, and he saw Ragnar’s body streaking white below him, things that were far away and things that were close all becoming one in the strange twilight world under the surface. 

Ragnar broke the surface like a grinning seal, and they wrestled in the water like children, dashing spray in each others faces and laughing and choking on mouthfuls of the stuff, salty as blood. At last, as the evening sun sank closer to the cliffs to the west, they hauled themselves up on gleaming ledges of black granite, gasping at the shock of cold air. They lay with limbs sprawling, as the last long fingers of sunlight trailed down the rocks and sank slowly into the blackening water. Ragnar lay with his head on Athelstan’s thigh, and took up his hand in his again, lifting it above his head as if to watch the silhouetted shapes they made, and then he bought his fingers to his mouth, and kissed them. 

Later, they might slip back into the black water and lie on their backs in a reflected heaven, stars above them and below. They might turn in the water, sliding hands over hands and between legs, flesh parting under lips and teeth and fingers. For now they were quiet, bodies pressed against one another in an unbroken line, and the thing that passed between them was quiet too.

**Author's Note:**

> Some things to know before reading:
> 
> Athelstan binds, and is outed when his bindings are removed non-consensually, first in a medical set-up, then in an interrogative one. Brief related violence in the interrogation scene. He is never mis-gendered in terms of pronouns, but gendered slurs are used. Apart from references to binding and Athelstan's clothing, there are no explicit descriptions of his body. 
> 
> I've tried to tag & use warnings thoroughly but let me know any other tagging requests.
> 
> Please let me know what you think, I'm not sure about this one...


End file.
